


Whitechapel Walker

by martialartist816



Series: Whitechapel Winters [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff, Fryeddy - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Jack the Ripper DLC, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:59:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7965250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martialartist816/pseuds/martialartist816
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick just got Jacob back, and he'll be damned if he lets the ripper take him away again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whitechapel Walker

**Author's Note:**

> **Update:** I added the tag "alternate universe" because while this series has Jacob living in India with frequent trips to England, it's actually the other way around in canon.
> 
> This work is the focal point of all the other stories in the series. The other stories will stem from certain flashbacks and hints mentioned in this story, and they are all set during a Whitechapel winter. Let me know what you think!

Even during the cold months every winter, Frederick Abberline stubbornly refused to close his window. Fire could warm up the inside of his rooms, but nothing kept the unforgiving, frigid air out of his fingers and toes. Snow blew onto the old wooden floors sometimes, when clouds were low and wind high, threatening to damage the planks even more and make him pay for the repairs out of pocket. Still, the window in the corner of the room remained open, an invitation that was taken up less and less frequently by an assassin named Jacob Frye.

Over the twenty years the inspector and the assassin had been friends, random visits in the middle of the night became the norm. Jacob liked to drink; he was never one to shy away from anything with a hint of alcohol in it. Frederick drank too, but he usually accompanied his pints with a different version of the phrase ‘been a long day in the field today.’ Frederick liked the nights Jacob would barge into his home unannounced—despite his verbal protests—and drag him out for a drink and a night free from worries.

Sometimes Jacob followed him home, and the mornings after those particular nights were what registered in Frederick’s memories as the best mornings of his life. They all blurred together in a fuzzy, sparkling mirage of warm skin under his hands and warmer words whispered in his ear.

The window stayed open, even though no one had passed through it in over three years.

* * *

 

A bloody murder brought Frederick back to Whitechapel. He had been living comfortably in The Strand for a few months, happily distracted by his promotion, until the mutilation of a young prostitute named Mary Ann Nichols. Frederick recognized the name when her case was slapped down onto his old desk. Polly. He remembered Polly. They met at The Frying Pan when Jacob accidentally spilled his drink all over her. The three of them became friendly acquaintances once they learned they all frequented the same pub a few nights out of every week. Frederick tried to not look at the body as much as possible when he inspected the scene of the crime.

Back at home—his former Whitechapel home which he thought he’d never see again—Frederick opened the window to let in some of the cooling late summer air as he read over the evidence report for Polly’s murder. After two whiskeys, Frederick still wasn’t even halfway through the report. Damn journalists had trampled and scattered any evidence left behind, making whoever wrote up the report try and piece together anything they could. The resulting pages were a mish-mosh of disjointed bits that made next to no sense whatsoever.

Frederick dropped the papers onto his small desk and let out a sigh, rubbing the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. When he lowered his hand, he saw a figure that hadn’t been there before crouching in his open windowsill, shrouded in black from the darkening sky during the calm twilight.

The inspector’s hand itched toward the gun holster at his belt, but his chest tightened in delight when he recognized the familiar hooded outline of a man. It wasn’t until Frederick relaxed in his chair that Jacob stepped down into the room and pulled down the hood. The light from the crackling fire gave his aged face a softer edge.

“The dark horse rears his ugly head again,” Frederick tried, unable to wipe the smile from his face.

“Last time I checked, you didn’t ever think I was ugly,” Jacob responded, sliding onto Frederick’s desk to sit down.

“Actually, forty looks good on you. More mature.” Frederick pushed his empty glass and depressing evidence report aside to give Jacob more room to sit, though he really should’ve gotten a chair like any normal person with manners. Jacob just scoffed, a smile similar to Frederick’s spreading over his face.

“Forty-five looks even better on you. I like the new mustache, by the way.” Jacob reached out a leather-gloved hand and ran his fingers over Frederick’s carefully groomed upper lip.

Frederick let his eyes slip closed for a moment, body reacting to Jacob’s touch like no time had passed at all. “I was beginning to think you would never come back,” he confessed quietly.

Jacob’s fingers slid up Frederick’s jaw until he could cup his cheek and tilt their faces closer together. The inspector cracked his eyes open at the action. "Did you think I forgot about you?” Jacob asked with his brows raised.

“Forgot, lost interest, slipped and fell off a rooftop and died when there was a perfectly good paved road to walk on.” Frederick huffed before his smile returned. “Any one of those.”

“Even if I did slip and break my skull open, you can be damn well sure I’d come back here as a ghost just to bother you some more.” Jacob laughed airily, a sound echoed by Frederick’s own chuckles. Jacob’s hand didn’t move from his cheek, thumb swiping slowly over the skin.

“I wouldn’t mind a haunting here and there if it’s from you.” Frederick leaned into Jacob’s hand and reached up to clasp his fingers. The assassin used the grip to hold Frederick in place as he leaned down, pressing a long overdue kiss to his lips. Frederick kissed back with his eyes closed and squeezed Jacob’s fingers tighter. His chest fluttered with longing; he didn’t know how much he missed Jacob until his heart swelled, feeling as though old cobwebs were finally being shaken loose from so many years of disuse.

“What brought you back?” Frederick asked against Jacob’s mouth.

The assassin puffed out a laugh, his breath rushing over Frederick’s lips in the most exciting way. “Freddy…” he chided. “What’s been bringing me back for the last twenty years? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the cheery weather.”

Frederick shrugged modestly and glanced to the side. “You did skip three years of visits. I thought something had changed.” Not that he’d let it bother him. Sometimes people grew apart. That was fine. Frederick could move on if Jacob wanted to put an end to whatever it was they had, no matter how wonderful he thought it was.

Jacob’s other hand came up to hold Frederick’s face insistently, ensuring he couldn’t look away any more. “Would it make it better to say I wanted to come back sooner? I tried, but you know how things get in the way. I promise you nothing has changed.”

Frederick studied those pale green eyes so close to his, finding nothing but the truth in Jacob’s expression. He eventually nodded in agreement and slid his fingers into Jacob’s hair. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve just missed you is all.”

Jacob smiled his dazzling, hasn’t-aged-at-all-since-he-was-twenty smile, and a playful glint in his eyes made Frederick’s heart race like he hadn’t aged at all either. “Then what do you say we step into the bedroom and make up for not seeing each other for three years?”

“That sounds like a promise I hope you intend to keep, Jacob.”

* * *

 

Jacob had been like a virgin again, blushing and staring heavy-lidded at Frederick’s mouth, his body hypersensitive and all-too-willing under the inspector’s fingers. Having him back in his bed reminded Frederick of the first time they’d ever been intimate with each other, when neither could expect the electric pleasure but both knew they wanted to feel it over and over again. Over time, they memorized each other’s bodies, and the one nice thing about not seeing the other for three years was relearning everything that caused the slightest gasp or shudder. Frederick pinned their reunion up among his favorite scandalous nights they’d spent together.

He avoided asking Jacob how long he would be back for. His answer wasn’t something he really wanted to know. And speaking of answers, Jacob never told him why he came back. Yes, it was nice to see him again, have him in his arms again, but he could tell Jacob had a purpose for being back in London, something to do with that secret society that ruled his life and his choices. He disappeared during the day and sometimes didn’t come back until the wee hours of the morning. The inspector had his own work to do. There were more murders, ones similar to Polly’s, and it chafed at Frederick’s pride each time another body showed up. This could not go unsolved.

The details were always the same: murder in the middle of the night, the victim a lady whose organs were ripped apart, any scarce evidence left behind led them nowhere. Frederick glared at his report, fingers clenching the paper so tightly that it wrinkled in the corners. Wrinkles appeared in his face as well, between his brows and at the edges of his mouth.

Jacob’s face showed the beginnings of wrinkles too. The lines deepened at the corners of his eyes when he smiled or, more accurately in the current moment, when he squinted in frustration. The assassin sat across from him at his home desk, his pint jug long since emptied, leg bouncing anxiously and impatiently. He sat forward and finally broke the long silence between them, grabbing the pages from Frederick’s hand and tossing them aside. “Staring at it for ages won’t make the answer any less elusive.”

Frederick made a feeble attempt to catch the report before it was thrown to the floor and scattered everywhere. He sighed and leaned back into his chair, inwardly relieved for the break in concentration. "It's my job to find out who’s behind it, Jacob. No matter how difficult it is.”

“Sometimes you have to know when to give up. You said yourself this case was impossible to solve!”

“Nearly impossible,” Frederick corrected. “And I can’t give up on something like this. These women and their families—and all of London, while I’m at it—deserve justice. I won’t give up until the killer is behind bars.”

The statement visibly grated at Jacob, and his jaw set stubbornly. “You’re overworking yourself. This isn’t worth the strain it’s putting on you, especially if all the clues are getting you precisely nowhere.”

Frederick smiled bitterly down at the desk. “I could say the same about you,” he said with a soft voice. That seemed to reel Jacob in a bit, who frowned and deflated, so Frederick continued. “I can see you’re overworking yourself too. I don’t know what you do all day when you’re gone, but you always come back looking so worn down and depressed. You’re worried about me, but I’m also worried about you.”

Jacob’s expression took on a more wounded look as he scowled at the fire. Something about this case didn’t sit well with the assassin, but Frederick couldn’t tell you what it was for the life of him. He did know, however, that it went beyond Jacob’s concern about his overbearing work ethic.

As Frederick was still mulling it over and trying to see through Jacob’s grimace, the assassin spoke up. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. This man you’re hunting is dangerous beyond what you can imagine.”

“It sounds as though you know something I don’t,” Frederick prompted, not accusatory but definitely curious. Jacob met his eyes again, then relaxed and shook his head.

“Just from what you’ve told me,” he promised.

Getting up from his chair, Jacob walked around the desk and placed his hand on Frederick’s shoulder. It dropped down his arm and held the inspector’s fingers as he found his way into Frederick’s lap, straddling his legs. “I am a killer. I’ve killed ten times the number of lives Jack the Ripper has taken, but even someone like me wouldn’t go so far as to murder innocent people. And the remains…” Jacob had to pause, remembering the sight of blood and entrails spilling from otherwise delicate and feminine bodies. He raised Frederick’s hand to his face and kissed his fingers. “You have to be the some kind of monster to accomplish that. I don’t want to find out what he’d do to you if he caught you alone.”

Frederick watched Jacob’s features change as he spoke, first concerned and afraid, then deeply saddened as he talked about the ripper being a monster. He pursed his lips together, feeling truly sorry that he made Jacob worry like that. He touched those lips with the same fingertips they kissed, then slid his hand into Jacob’s hair.

“So far his only known agenda is female prostitutes. I won’t go as far as to tell you I’m safe, but I am more inclined to protect the future victims than spend time jumping at shadows.” Maybe it wouldn’t make Jacob feel any better, but it was the truth.

Jacob’s response came as a bit of a shock to Frederick when he touched their foreheads together and smiled tiredly. “I wonder if I can ever convince you to come to India with me.”

Frederick laughed at first just with the suggestion of it. “Why? What’s so special in India that it has to keep you away from London?” And from me, he wanted to add.

“My sister,” Jacob answered surely. “And my apprentices. It’s lovely there, actually, especially in the winter. You ought to see it at least once with me giving the grand tour.”

“If it’s as grand as you say it is, then the chances of you convincing me are pretty high.” Frederick indulged the idea for both of their sake’s because traveling the world with Jacob and seeing where he lived and worked would be the stuff of dreams. “But my job isn’t something I can just walk away from for a few months,” he added.

“I know,” Jacob said, resigning. “It’ll just have to be one of those things to do before we lick the bucket.”

“It’s ‘kick the bucket’, you incredible half-wit.” Frederick smiled fondly when Jacob laughed at his name calling.

“An incredible half-wit is still incredible. So I’ll accept your compliment,” Jacob reassured with a smirk.

Frederick’s hands began to playfully tug open Jacob’s many layers of dark leathers and fabrics. Once he was down to nothing but a simple undershirt and his trousers, Frederick slipped his hands around him and rubbed slow, kneading circles over Jacob’s back.

“In the meantime, I’ll have to get by with the stories you tell me about India,” he said.

Jacob turned to liquid under Frederick’s hands and leaned forward to relax against his chest, chin propped up by the inspector’s shoulder.

“Admit it. You just want me to go on and on because you love the soothing sound of my voice.”

“Oh, you caught me.”

Jacob chuckled and peppered lazy, feather-light kisses up and down Frederick’s throat, who hummed at the attention and allowed his eyes to slip closed.

After a long moment of Frederick rubbing Jacob’s back and Jacob soaking up every minute of it, he said “I love you no matter what, Freddy. No matter where I am.”

“I love you too,” came Frederick’s reply. It was easy to say out loud—always had been—even the first time the words were exchanged. That one night burned deeply into Frederick’s memory, a faded cloud in the back of his mind that would pop into consciousness at random times. When the fog was low and damp over London, so thick that even the light from the gas lamps couldn’t penetrate, they had held each other after a life- threatening mission Jacob almost hadn’t come back from. Frederick cradled his head and said he loved him in a hushed tone. Jacob said it back, and they’d been saying it ever since.

But despite the stigma about two men sharing a bed, despite their opposing career choices, and despite the distance, the words spilled from his mouth as easily as ever.

The assassin moving against his body brought Frederick back from his somber memory. Jacob pulled away just enough to hold Frederick’s face gingerly between his palms and kissed him tenderly. Had Frederick opened his eyes, he would’ve seen the line forming between Jacob’s furrowed brows, building upon the foundation of some unspoken passionate emotion that drove Jacob to kiss him so deeply in that moment. But his eyes remained closed, and the open window allowed a gust of autumn wind to carry in twigs and dead leaves.

* * *

 

Another murder. Another life taken by Jack the Ripper. It happened right under Frederick’s nose, when he was distracted by how every thought and nerve ending and word leaving his lips was alight with Jacob. Jacob. Jacob. Jacob. _Jacob._

He rushed to work after an officer had knocked on his door early in the morning—Jacob was nowhere to be found, but he tried not to think about it—and he arrived at the scene of the crime impossibly tired and admittedly a little sore. The cold snuck up on him. Did winter arrive overnight? Outside, without the sun shining because of the clouds and without the protection of a coat or gloves, Frederick found it difficult to concentrate on the case. Not that he wanted to concentrate on the case when the body was as bloody and defiled as they come, anyway. Frederick was glad he didn’t get the chance to eat that morning or else his breakfast would’ve appeared all over the dirt.

“There’s still no evidence, Inspector,” an officer told him, making Frederick snap back to the present with a slight jolt of surprise. He blinked, and the officer continued, sounding as tired as everyone felt. “It doesn’t make any sense, though. We kept all journalists and unauthorized civilians out of the entire block. We got here almost immediately after it happened. Some witnesses heard a scream, you see, not even two hours ago…”

Each word out of his mouth only discouraged Frederick more.

“People heard screaming but no one saw the ripper getting away?” The inspector sighed. Really, the alley was surrounded by apartment windows. How could a man who was probably covered in blood and harvesting human organs slip away undetected with so many eyes around the scene of the crime? “And why is there no evidence? If we got here before the press it should all still be intact.”

The officer shook his head dismally. “He didn’t leave any, Inspector.”

“That’s impossible. Then the murder couldn’t have been so recently. He must’ve stayed a while after to cover his tracks.”

“The body’s still warm, Inspector.”

“Christ, alright, I want detectives here this instant. No one gets within fifty yards of this hellhole until we’ve scraped up every last bloody clue.” Frederick cringed at his own word choice and rubbed the bridge of his nose, the end of it turning red from the cold, ignoring when the officer saluted him and scurried off.

* * *

 

Jacob hadn’t returned. Not when Frederick got home, not the next day, and not the next month. As quickly as Frederick thought he’d gone back to India, he dispelled the idea altogether. Jacob wouldn’t leave London when he needed to stop the predator hunting her civilians. Still, Frederick wrote to Evie in case Jacob had grown heartless and turned away from the city he risked his life to liberate all those years ago. It took a week after he sent the first letter to send a second one. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that something very bad happened to Jacob.

Frederick pleaded with Evie to come back. If anyone could eradicate this new evil lurking in the shadows, it would be one who shared those shadows and their secrets: an assassin and that mysterious creed. Of course, Frederick’s logic meant Jacob would’ve been perfect for the job, but he was still missing and Frederick grew wearier by the day.

Some time later, Frederick received a response from Evie saying she’d be there as quickly as she could.

Between the few days that spanned the arrival of Evie’s letter and the arrival of Evie herself, Frederick’s mind had thought its way into all sorts of corners and he didn’t like the direction it was headed. In his impressive number of years in police and detective work, he’d known of only two people who could so easily break the law and get away with anything. Murder included. Not only get away with it, but these two people could disappear without a trace, always a hundred steps ahead of the law but right behind you when you least expected it. That kind of power scared him sometimes, but he’d made close friends with these people. The assassins. Jacob and Evie Frye. From day one he trusted them, and realizing that made Frederick wonder about the integrity of his own work. He’d turned his back to countless murders. Yes, the twins killed those who would never stay behind bars for long, those who had ties in places so high he couldn’t even see. But killing was killing, and looking the other way made Frederick just as guilty as the ones holding the crimson-stained blades.

He expressed these thoughts, in fewer and gentler words, to Evie when she came to his office. She seemed to understand why he arrived at that conclusion, and she assured him that Jacob couldn’t have been the culprit. However she didn’t divulge her own hypotheses, and Frederick knew she had some sort of idea, opting to stay silent on the issue of who was truly behind it all. Damn assassins and their occult sensibilities. By now Frederick’s loyalty to their secrets should’ve earned him a little more trust.

Whether or not Evie really trusted him, Frederick laid out all the meager evidence and details for her, hoping she would recognize something and find a lead with that. Anything was better than where The Yard currently stood. Find the killer, find Jacob. Find Jacob, find the killer.

Evie was convinced of this, and she pulled Frederick aside after investigating one of the scenes of the crime when the officials around them were distracted. She stood close to keep her voice low, breath forming mist between their faces.

“I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you this: Jacob is doing everything in his power to stop this madness. He’s the same man who freed London from Starrick’s tyranny, only a bit more stubborn. He thinks he needs to do it alone.” Behind Evie’s determined expression, Frederick could see fear in her eyes. Fear of the killer, fear for Jacob’s life. _That makes two of us, Miss Frye._

* * *

 

Evie’s unassuming deductive work did uncover a rumor, and that rumor led to another, and another. Until she left the city to follow a certain brothel house mistress to her manor out in the country. “A hive for corruption and sex and crooked morals,” as she put it.

Alone in London again, Frederick wandered to the rooms Jacob rented. It turned out he had kept those rooms for years as a place to live when he visited. He even continued paying rent over the three long years he had not returned, clueing Frederick in to the fact that Jacob did indeed plan on coming back to him. Jacob spent most nights in London in Frederick’s flat, but the apartment must’ve been where he left his clothes and other possessions.

The door creaked loudly when Frederick pushed through it. In the dark with no fire burning, it was cold and unwelcoming. He found a simple candleholder and lit it to see around the place, but what greeted him looked more like a crime scene than someone’s home.

Books and papers scattered on the floor. Furniture toppled over and showing deep knife cuts from a struggle that obviously took place all over the apartment. Frederick followed the trail of destruction and found splatters of blood in random cracks and corners. He could practically watch the events play out in front of him, and he covered his mouth to stop a sudden sob from escaping his throat. Because Jack the Ripper was still free and murdering when there hadn’t been a single trace of Jacob in over a month.

Frederick found the bed that was probably barely ever slept in and crawled on top of the sheets. The blankets were so stiff from the cold that he may as well have been laying on ice, but the pillow smelled faintly of Jacob if Frederick pressed his face deep enough into it. And he stayed there, hiding away from the world as he cried so no one would see it. The shattered glass window across from the bed allowed chilled fog to creep into the room, curling around Frederick’s body and hiding any proof of Jacob’s existence in the merciless dark.

* * *

 

The other officers and detectives noticed a change in Frederick. He still came to work and tried to sort out the case with what little scraps they’d been thrown, but he was only going through the motions. He had no faith left in the justice system, and as time ticked by he also lost hope in Evie succeeding in her quest. If she couldn’t find the ripper, the case would go cold. Of course, he didn’t dare say a word of this to anyone. Letting Evie hold the reins would be another one of their secrets he’d take to the grave.

He paced the first floor of Scotland Yard’s temporary headquarters in Whitechapel, hands clasped behind his back and his mustache hiding the hard pressed line his lips drew. There was hot coffee for him at a nearby desk, but it remained untouched. Officers milled around and threw occasional glances in Frederick’s direction. They were concerned to see his new, disheartened demeanor, obviously assuming there was little left to do if even the top inspector had nowhere to look.

An officer burst through the door a moment later, startling everyone and bringing the frosty air in behind him.

“There’s been an outbreak at Lambeth Asylum. Patients are loose, and all of the staff have disappeared.”

Frederick felt a spark of purpose kick start his feet into moving, and waved for the others around him to follow as he headed out the door. It took a bit of speeding and nearly trampling a few stray cats to reach the asylum before too much damage was done, and it was past sundown when they arrived. Frederick hopped out of the police carriage before it came to a complete stop and took in the gorgeous and frightening structure that was Lambeth Asylum. Out in the courtyard, screams of panic and tormented souls reached their ears.

The inspector turned around to face his subordinates, who were frozen in fear just from the sound of the screaming. Half of them looked about ready to run straight home and never look back. Frederick frowned.

“I want the perimeter guarded. No one gets in or out until we have order again, got it? The rest of you, come with me.”

Frederick pulled the pistol from his coat pocket and advanced on the building. He didn’t look behind to see if the officers were following or still quaking in their boots. If they couldn’t follow instructions on the job, he’d deal with them later.

Stepping through the front doors meant getting swallowed up by a different kind of darkness. Frederick had been in the asylum a few times before, but he preferred to stay away when his job didn’t require him to go. The interior of the building was filled to the brim with despair and hopelessness, something he figured was the product of senile patients and their mistreatment by the staff. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out figures sliding about in the background, looking and sounding more like ghosts than human beings.

He kept his pistol raised just in case, but most of the decrepit souls milling around didn’t notice him, trapped in their own mental hell from which reality offered no solace.

A man rushed at him. He seemed to have come from nowhere, plowing forward with a terrifying, guttural scream. Frederick tried to tell if the man was simply one of the crazier ones or if he had intent to kill. Locking eyes with the assailant had Frederick frozen. He couldn’t move his legs to get out of the way, couldn’t even twitch his finger just enough to pull the trigger.

The loud bang from another gun broke the trance, and Frederick blinked as the patient fell back onto the floor with a bullet hole in his temple. An officer appeared in Frederick’s peripherals and gave him a grim and hesitant nod. It wasn’t like the inspector to let fear paralyze his body.

Without a word, Frederick continued his advance toward the back of the great room where a maze of halls and cells made up the rest of the asylum. The great room was just for show, for visitors. Everywhere else was made of hard steel walls and metal bars. He passed a sign that read ‘EXPERIMENTATION WING’ in faded lettering and trudged onward over the pale green floor tiles. Down the hall, a screaming voice swelled up above all the other noises. It grew louder and louder as whoever it was got closer. The owner of the voice finally appeared, dashing around a corner and advancing right at the squad of officers, screaming all the while.

Frederick raised his gun and aimed it at the man’s chest. He had the same look in his eyes as the last one, devoid of any emotion besides angry, angry fear. The kind where an animal is driven so far into a corner it had no choice but to lash out. Instinct won over rationality, and Frederick shot him right in the heart. But before anyone could utter a word about it, yet another screamer came barreling out from the same hallway. The officers shouted in confusion and frustration. One ran out from behind Frederick and struggled with the patient. He got the man wrestled to the floor, and a few more officers scuttled forward to help hold him down. Even with his hands cuffed behind his back, the patient still screamed and snarled viciously.

“They’re all coming from the same place.”

Frederick drifted, dream-like, toward the hallway where all the deranged men had come from. A gunshot made him halt, and he looked to see an officer standing over the now still body of the cuffed patient, gun smoking.

“That wasn’t a human I just shot,” the officer said. “I don’t know what’s going on with these people, but those ones are monsters through and through.”

You could see it in their eyes. It was the same icy cold gaze that had Frederick frozen earlier. Whoever the patients had once been, someone had scared them so thoroughly that they abandoned all humanity.

Frederick swallowed and resumed his trek down the mysterious ‘experiments’ hallway. More of the monsters showed their screaming faces, and the officers followed upstream after shooting down each one. The chaos led them to a dark, stone stairwell down which talking could be heard. A female voice. Was that Evie?

The stairs gave way to a large, medieval looking room with torches lit along the walls. The officers all spread out on the catwalk to get a better picture of the area, and the ground floor revealed where all the attacking patients had come from.

There was a sea of them. Literally dozens swarming about like wasps in a hive just waiting for someone to disturb them. And disturbed they were.

One of Frederick’s officers opened fire on the crowd, and the rest followed suit. That only angered the men down below, and they frantically climbed stairs and columns to reach the officers shooting at them. Most didn’t make it to Frederick, but some were lucky enough to have not gotten instantly killed.

A grunt fell from Frederick’s lips as a body crashed into him, clawing and snarling like some ravenous beast. They struggled to overpower one another until Frederick finally managed to hit him over the head with the bulky part of his gun, and the body crumpled at his feet.

Frederick wrestled his way out of another patient’s grasp, and that one met the same fate as all the others. Out of the corner of his eye, Frederick caught a different kind of movement. A dark blue jacket and hood shrouding a female figure. Evie. Frederick tried to follow her, but she disappeared behind a cell door and he was once again surrounded by the soulless humans.

He was down to just a few bullets by the time the last patient fell. Not having much to rely on always made Frederick nervous, but he pushed the thought from his mind as he burst through the door he had last seen Evie near. A body lay on the floor, and the sickening aura surrounding it told Frederick straight away that it was the ripper. Evie had killed him.

Frederick pointed the gun at the body, just in case, panting from the fight. “Miss Frye, what the _hell_ happened here?”

“Nothing, Inspector.” She sounded weak, tired, scared. “Nothing happened here.”

Frederick could barely make out her shape in the dark, but it was plain she knelt on the ground, holding someone else close to her. There were only a few people Frederick knew she cared for deeply enough to cripple her poise like that. And it all clicked in Frederick’s head. Jacob.

“Trust me. Jack the Ripper is dead.”

Frederick couldn’t hear her. His heart thudded too loudly in his ears for him to hear much of anything. Jacob was there. Alive? Barely, it seemed. The ripper lay lifelessly at his feet, and suddenly the case that had been causing him, Whitechapel, all of London so much grief was now closed. His brain couldn’t work fast enough to process it all.

“Inspector!” an officer’s voice echoed off the walls.

“Now help me, Frederick,” Evie quickly pleaded in her broken voice, curling protectively around Jacob’s frame like a wounded and threatened creature. “No one must ever know that Jack the Ripper was an assassin.”

Frederick stared in her direction, torn between following the law and doing what he knew to be right. For the thousandth time in his life, Frederick would turn a blind eye to the occult that went against everything he believed in. All for the love of the man who sat hunched before him, bleeding and bruised.

“Inspector! The journalists are here!”

Evie looked away from his hard stare, expression showing physical pain just at the mention of journalists. She thought their secrets were out.

But Frederick sheathed his gun and turned to the door, closing it as he shouted. “I want those vultures gone this instant, is that clear?”

The door shut them into a little bubble of quiet. Evie smiled at her brother and cradled his face in her hands.

“It’s over, Jacob. I’m here.”

Frederick crouched down and checked the pulse on the ripper’s body, confirming to himself and his anxieties that the monster was indeed gone forever. After standing, he went straight to Jacob and took his hand, frowning. From what he could see in the low light, the wounds were deep and needed attention. But Jacob would survive. He’d seen much worse.

None of the three said anything for a long while. The voices of the officers died down, probably because they were busy shooing away all the reporters. Evie stood and brushed dirt from her pants, muttering something about going to hide the body. Right. The ripper had to disappear.

Evie effortlessly slung the body over her shoulder, and Frederick tried not to think about how many times she’d done that in her lifetime. He took the place she had been sitting in to help Jacob stay upright. As the assassin left through a small window and got swept up in the winter wind, Frederick held Jacob in a way he couldn’t bring himself to do when Evie was there. He gently rocked them both back and forth.

Mouth against Jacob’s hair, Frederick spoke. “How’d you manage to get tangled up in this mess, hm?” Did he hurt you, torture you? Frederick’s throat stung at the thought of Jacob enduring the ripper’s treatment for the months he’d been gone. “Maybe you’re reaching the age of retirement.”

Another long, still silence. Frederick moved, bones aching in protest, but pulled Jacob up with him and out of the asylum to go find a hospital.

* * *

 

Frederick asked—no, practically begged—Evie to let Jacob rest and recuperate at Frederick’s house. Since, technically speaking, the case was still open, Frederick still lived in Whitechapel. His rooms weren’t far from Jacob’s own, where Evie stayed for the time being until she went back to India. She knew, didn’t she? She knew about Frederick and the kind of relationship he had with her brother, right?

When Frederick begged—asked—her to hand responsibility of Jacob’s recovery over to him, she smiled and nodded with a quick “I’ll be sure to knock before entering the room.” Oh, she definitely knew.

It was painful at first. Painful to watch Jacob wince with every movement. Painful to look at the swollen-shut eye on the right side of his face and to wrap the bruised rips with medical tape. But Jacob proved as stubborn as ever and healed himself quicker than the doctor had told them.

They spent peaceful afternoons together. Frederick wouldn’t leave him alone for more than a few hours a day, and the assassin followed instructions for once by staying in bed. He told Frederick everything, about Jack and how he’d been one of Jacob’s apprentices. About how guilty Jacob felt for all of it, spurring him to try catching the ripper on his own.

“Thank you, Freddy,” Jacob said, interrupting Frederick’s musing over his cup of tea.

He sat in a comfortable chair next to Jacob’s bed, well _his_ bed. Frederick had slapped down the newspaper and made Jacob read it because he was bedridden and there was nothing else to do. Jacob had been quietly scanning the words until he looked up from the pages and spoke unprovoked.

“I don’t mind being your nurse as long as you don’t make me dress like one.” Frederick didn’t glance up from his own reading, some report about the ripper case the office had given him.

“No, not that.” Jacob’s healing face broke out into a grin. “But now that you mention it, you would look dashing in a maid’s outfit. Your next disguise, perhaps?”

Frederick threw him an unamused glace. “Then what are you thanking me for?”

Jacob turned the paper around to show Frederick he had been reading an article about Jack’s disappearance. ‘SLIPPED THROUGH THE YARD’S FINGERS’ it read. “You and your office are taking the blow for his disappearance. Thank you.”

Frederick shrugged and went back to his tea. “I know how important it is to you. All I care about is that he won’t kill anyone ever again. The public doesn’t need to know the details.”

“Maybe we should make you an honorary assassin.”

“Only if you want my nightmares to come true.”

Jacob laughed like he wasn’t overcoming mental and physical trauma, and it made Frederick’s heart flutter to hear the carefree sound of it. Jacob reached for Frederick with one hand, his touch falling short of his hand but managing to grasp his pant leg. An unfair pout followed a gentle tug.

“Freddy…” Oh, he missed the way Jacob said that. “You don’t have to sit so far like I’m some young lady you’re attending to. Come closer. It’s your bed, after all.”

Frederick couldn’t resist. Not that he wanted to, anyhow. He got up from his chair and slid his way under the blankets with Jacob, minding his injuries but not his personal space. Warmth surrounded him, and he sighed against Jacob’s shoulder.

“It’s bloody cold in here. Why did you leave the window open?”

“Sorry. Habit.”


End file.
